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Sour Dates

Famous choreographer Zhang Jigang will stage his new work Sour Dates at the Great Hall of People during the closing ceremony of the Beijing International Dance Festival.
Zhang, art director of the China Disabled Persons, Performing Art Troupe (CDPPAT), head of the Song and Dance Ensemble of the General Political Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and the only dancer in China to have won the Century Star title, has created more than 260 dances and dance dramas. His most famous dance, the Thousand-hand Bodhisattva, performed by 21 hearing-impaired girls and boys at the 2005 CCTV Spring Festival Gala caused a nationwide sensation and an artistic image known to all.

Sour Dates will portray the life of China's legendary Shanxi businessmen in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The business culture of Shanxi has a long history of more than 2,000 years and reached a peak when Shanxi businessmen established China's first embryonic bank.

Sour Dates tells a simple and heart-breaking story. Sour Dates, a girl servant, is forced to marry her master's idiot son, while her lover Huoji follows the habits of Shanxi businessmen to make a business tour to Mongolia. Sour Dates goes mad, but still waits for her lover's return. The result is that the pair is poisoned to death.

Zhang Jigang, born in Shanxi, uses 160 top dances from all over China and an investment of 10 million yuan (US$1.25 million) to examine the emotional life of Shanxi's people of a century ago. This work will also appear on the silver screen soon in the form of a Shanghai Film Group Corporation presentation.

Time: January 19
Venue: Great Hall of the People
Admission: 800, 580, 380, 280, 180, 50 yuan
Tel: +86 10 8447 7309